Serendipity Forums

Is there a way to let users subscribe to your blog so that every time there is a new entry on your blog they will receive an email.

Many of my prospective users certainly will not use RSS feeds, so that is not a viable option.

I tried a quick search of this forum, but I wasn't able to find anything about this.

Thanks for any help or suggestions any of you can offer.

For my site I use feedburner to send out emails. I already use feedburner for my RSS feeds as it provides wonderful stats and they also provide an option to email people.

The email service sends out an email once per day of all the updates during the last 24 hours. You can set the time it does send out the messages; mine sends out at 8am local time.

The way I added the function to my site is just by inserting the code into the template for my site. While this is not the ideal method for a sidebar item it works for me.

If you (or anyone else for that matter) is interested in going this route you can find the script running on my site. Also if you want the exact HTML I used in my template for this just let me know and I will explain further.

There might be other email solutions for s9y, but I dont like dealing with email so that is why I went with an external service.

Hi!

Somewhere in this forum there's a description on how to use the "Mail entry" plugin to mail each new entry via email to an email address. You can setup a mailinglist (either on your own host or using YahooGroups! or something like that) so that everyone gets mailed that has subscribed himself to the list.

You can add a "subscribe here" form using a HTML nugget sidebar plugin which points to the YahooGroups! site, or your own mailman installation...

Other than that, what Zac pointed out is a viable way as well. I think there are also services other than feedburner which allow to subscribe users to an rss feed and send mails to them instead.

Regards,
Garvin

garvinhicking wrote:I think there are also services other than feedburner which allow to subscribe users to an rss feed and send mails to them instead.

Two services that I've heard of:
http://www.feedblitz.com/
http://www.r-mail.org/

I've never tried their services as a client nor admin, so I do not know if they are any good. Feedburner was the easiest for me to setup as I was already using their services.

Another interesting site is http://feedcrier.com which allows people to subscribe via AIM, MSN or Google Talk. The site has been having a few issues as of late, but interesting none the less.

Thank you both for your replies.

I will look into both options some more and post later on my status.

Thanks again for your advice.

Chickens, please bear with me, as I'm a little lost.

There seems to be more than one RSS feed on my blog. Which one am I supposed to use?

Haha, or are they all the same?

Thanks.

I didn't want to start a new thread, but I really need help with this!

Is there a way to have users subscribe using their email address, and then each time a new entry is posted, an email will be sent out saying that a new entry has been posted. The email should not contain the actual blog post, but rather a link to the post, as well as a link to a page where they can unsubscribe from the list.

I don't know the first thing about coding, so this really poses a challenge to me.

I would really like to get some help with this, and I am willing to pay someone who can get something like this up and running for me. I'd prefer to be able to use an external mailing list and not have to use my own server, but I'm willing to look at different options.

If you are interested in helping me with this, please simply post in this thread. I can only make payments by paypal, so if you can't accept paypal, sorry.

I really hope someone can help me with this, thank you for your time.

Hi!

Is there a way to have users subscribe using their email address, and then each time a new entry is posted, an email will be sent out saying that a new entry has been posted. The email should not contain the actual blog post, but rather a link to the post, as well as a link to a page where they can unsubscribe from the list.

Chickens replied to that - you should setup a mailinglist (search the forums for "mailing list rss") or use feedburner service. You can use any of your RSS feeds, it doesn'T matter. The best feed to use is the RSS 2.0 feed though.

HTH,
Garvin

garvinhicking wrote:Hi!

Is there a way to have users subscribe using their email address, and then each time a new entry is posted, an email will be sent out saying that a new entry has been posted. The email should not contain the actual blog post, but rather a link to the post, as well as a link to a page where they can unsubscribe from the list.

Chickens replied to that - you should setup a mailinglist (search the forums for "mailing list rss") or use feedburner service. You can use any of your RSS feeds, it doesn'T matter. The best feed to use is the RSS 2.0 feed though.

HTH,
Garvin

Hmm, but I think the feedburner service will actually send my blogpost, and not simply a link back to my blog. I would like the users to visit my blog and not just read things in their email inbox.

Therefore, I'd like a service that only sends the title of the blog with a direct link to the specific post.

Is that possible?

Hi!

Is that possible?

Yes, by setting up a free mailinglist at yahoo or google or wherever. Then you install the s9y plugin "Mail entries". Configure that plugin to use the email address of the mailinglist you created.

Then tell your visitors to subscribe to the google/yahoo mailinglist to receive your updates. You can put instructions on how to subscribe in a HTML nugget sidebar plugin for example, or in a sticky blog entry.

Regards,
Garvin

garvinhicking wrote:Hi!

Is that possible?

Yes, by setting up a free mailinglist at yahoo or google or wherever. Then you install the s9y plugin "Mail entries". Configure that plugin to use the email address of the mailinglist you created.

Then tell your visitors to subscribe to the google/yahoo mailinglist to receive your updates. You can put instructions on how to subscribe in a HTML nugget sidebar plugin for example, or in a sticky blog entry.

Regards,
Garvin

Haha, sorry, but forgive my ignorance - will that require me to do anything manually, or will everything be handled automatically?

Hi!

Haha, sorry, but forgive my ignorance - will that require me to do anything manually, or will everything be handled automatically?

You must manually create the mailinglist. You must manually subscribe to the mailinglist. The only automatic thing is that the entries you will blog in the future are automatically sent to your mailinglist.

Why don't you simply try it out? Then it will become clear to you.

Regards,
Garvin